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Military Dependents

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Extended and repeated deployments can cause significant stress to military families and may result in lower levels of reenlistment. RAND research has explored the need for military-sponsored child care and the role of military spouses, and continues to provide guidance to policymakers on how to attract and retain personnel with essential skills while also supporting military families.

The U.S. Department of Defense has 26 policies related to family resilience, but definitions of the term vary across the services. To facilitate a comprehensive view of family resilience programming, a well-articulated, standard definition of family resilience is needed.

Experiences during a service member's deployment can have a profound impact on how families fare during the reintegration period. But for many experienced military families, functioning eventually returns to pre-deployment levels.

RAND evaluated the Unified Behavioral Health Center for Military Veterans and Their Families, a new model of behavioral health care that provides colocated and coordinated care for veterans and their families.

This report presents an evaluation of the Unified Behavioral Health Center for Military Veterans and Their Families, a new model of behavioral health care that provides colocated and coordinated care for veterans and their families.

The Department of Defense Education Activity operates or contracts with local agencies to operate schools on 15 contiguous U.S. installations. This report evaluates the options for educating military-connected children on these installations.

RAND Europe was commissioned by the Forces in Mind Trust to conduct a systematic review to develop a better understanding of the evidence base around four themes associated with the transition into civilian life for UK Service leaver families.

RAND Europe was commissioned by the Forces in Mind Trust to conduct a systematic review to develop a better understanding of the evidence base around four themes associated with the transition into civilian life for UK Service leaver families.

The evidence linking combat deployments directly to poorer marital functioning has been sparse and contradictory. Although marital satisfaction among military couples declined from 2003 to 2009, the divorce rate among them remained steady.

The analyses described in this article compare associations between prior deployments and current marital satisfaction across four different ways of measuring prior deployment within a large and representative sample of married Army service members and their spouses.

Drawing upon data from the Deployment Life Study, this article examines whether female military spouses (SPs) are disadvantaged relative to matched civilian peers in terms of hours worked and earnings, paying particular attention to gaps among the highest educated women.

Deployment can be a significant source of stress for military families. Understanding how families prepare in the face of such stress, and which families are less likely to prepare, is a priority of the Department of Defense.

RAND's Deployment Life Study was designed to examine how deployment affects the health and well-being of military families. M.M. Smith, an active-duty military spouse, offers her response to the study.

Partnerships have benefited both U.S. military installations and communities in terms of cost savings, improved operations, access to additional expertise and resources, and improved military-community relations.

This issue highlights the stress of military deployments and resilience of military families; RAND research on cybercrime, network defense, and data breaches; the 40th anniversary of RAND's landmark Health Insurance Experiment; and more.

In examining two areas (accounting and employee benefits) where the Department of Defense might spend less nonappropriated funding, RAND assessed costs and challenges and identified ways to manage organizational changes in the face of resistance.

RAND researchers assessed U.S. Department of Defense efforts to determine whether any administrative activities paid for with funding that was not congressionally appropriated could be consolidated -- and, if so, whether savings would occur.

Focusing only on the availability of particular food outlets in a neighborhood may ignore other important factors, including how families decide what food to buy and where to buy it, availability of healthy foods at home, and parenting practices.

Despite the fact that service members, spouses, and their children experience frequent deployments to combat zones throughout the world, a recent study of more than 2,700 military families found that they generally fare well and adapt effectively to the stresses of deployment.

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Researcher Spotlight

Research Programmer

Teague Ruder is a research programmer primarily working within RAND Health. He has worked on a diverse set of projects, including spillover effects of uninsurance, access to health care among vulnerable populations, impacts of health reform, developing health literacy mapping tools, and several…

Senior Management Scientist

Laura Werber is a senior management scientist at the RAND Corporation and a member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty. She applies organizational theories and methods to a wide array of policy issues, including community partnerships, workforce management, and military families.

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